Its Rudy's fault.

First, welcome to the board..what took you so long

Rarely, if ever, can you place losses totally on Coaches! Now, that is not to say that they are not part of the total loss, but the players make plays and the coach "sometimes" places those players and the team in position to make the best plays possible to lead to a victory, so there might be some small blame, but not total. This is the same story line to every loss this year IMHO: No bench depth due to injuries. wide open missed shots, getting virtually nothing from your bench. letting Nash dribble into the middle of the paint, shooting 41.6% from the field, shooting 26% from the 3 and shooting 65% from the charity stripe lent more to this loss than Rudy's player rotation.

Have Taylor and Rice back in the rotation, tweak any of these numbers just a bit and we win last night!

How is that for your first rebuttal!

 

It's almost as if the Rockets are tanking the season. Taking Cato out of the game was stupid plain and simple. That's the Cato everyone has wanted and now that he's playing well you pull him out of the game and we dribble, dribble, dribble until we lose the ball.

On the bright side Griffin owned Dirk. 7 Blocks is amazing not to mention the altered shots. Griffin and Cato played very well together. KT stunk last night and was struggling. I never say him pass the ball to Griffin. There's must be something brewing in the locker room between those two guys.

 

Franchize3...you are correct in your obversation though on Cato. I just think more went into the loss. Cato should have been there too.

Hey, this team can compete with the issues they have..imagine minimal injuries and just one category improvement last night!

 

Excuse me, Kenny only took seven shots and made three of them. He didn't really shoot enough to be considered struggling. Griffin on the other hand took fifteen shots and only made four of them. He was 1 of 8 from the 3 point line. Now THAT is struggling. And furthermore, I distinctly rember a nice pass Kenny gave to Griffin down low for a dunk, so either you didn't watch the game closely or you're making stuff up.

What is it? Is it just easier to pick on Kenny because he was a late first round draft pick and not much was expected of him. That's the only explanation I can come up with for all the Kenny bashing. Yet, noone dares criticize Eddie. Undoubtedly Eddie was the man on defense last night, but his offense was flat out ugly.

 

I just don't understand Rudy's fascination with this 3 guard, no defense lineup. Subbing Cato and Griff in and out the game in the fourth cost the Rockets this game.

Kenny, Cato, Griffin, Mobley and Francis made the comeback and were dominating the Mavs. Don Nelson was going nuts just trying to find a combination of players that could match up to that lineup. Then Rudy makes the idiodic move of abandoning what was working so that Mooch could be in the game. It didn't work. Nowitzki went off since Griffin was no longer checking him. The Mavs got easy rebounds since "Big Game" Cato was out the game. And Nash drove the lane with no fear since the Rockets didn't have their dual shot blocker front line in.

Nothing against Moochie, but he shoudn't have been in that game. Cato earned the right to finish that one out with his strong play. Rudy should have just stuck with the line up the Mavs couldn't match.

 

Just something to note. When that line up of Moochie, Mobley, and Francis came in, the Mavs announcer said, "Oh great! This is the line up that gives the Mavericks trouble." For him to say that, the three-guard line up must have done damage to the Mavericks in the past.

 

Yeah, in the past. But not last night. If the other guys were getting the job done and the 3 guard lineup wasn't, then just stick with the hot hands.

 

Right on Jeff, Rudy should have gone all the way with the line up that was keeping us in the game.If anything if the MAVS hate our 3 guard line up, we should have waited until we were tied or close to sub mooch, meaning the last minute or seconds.

 

FROM DON NELSON: www.rockets.com

FROM RUDY

FROM MOBLEY

FROM STEVE
On the Rockets rally in the second half:

They played zone. Our shots weren't falling. We figured out their zone (see third quarter). They went man-to-man. We matched up. They switched their zone. We couldn't recover. I guess my point is that the coaches and players really do see things out there that as casual observers of the games we fans sometimes see. It's not like they don't see that. Subbing in Cato could have worked, but then again, we were up against a new zone, so maybe small ball would have worked better (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Maybe I'm just getting tired of fans suddenly becoming experts in coaching. Our guys stuck with the game plan. It was execution that cost us down the stretch. And even with that, it was fun to see the Rockets play an uptempo game in the second half.

 

Hey DCKID if KT could bring the intangibles into the game, like Griff it wouldn't matter how many shots he took or made.This is his what 3rd year and he still hasn't developed them. He has offense granted, but being one dimensional can hurt your team. Lately, our guards lack of D is allowing their hard earned points and playmaking to become futile.KT can hoop and he helps more than he hurts on the offensive side.He just like the rest of the team with a couple of exceptions need to play D better.

 

I don't think taking Cato out lost us the game. I think our poor defense down the stretch lost us the game.

 

So, basically, Rudy got out-coached and the players screwed up. The casual observers have noticed that much. We all know Rudy is the guy getting paid millions to coach and the players getting paid millions to play (and not us) which further solidifies their positions as the real experts. However, they aren't beyond criticism and, darn it, when the team falls short in such seemingly bone-headed ways b****in' an' moanin' is just plain theraputic!

 

I am tired of people criticizing the people are who are criticizing the very same people criticizing the Rockets

If we can all just state our opinions without getting mad at someone for stating another/opposite point-of-view/opinion there would be peace.

Be critical of someone's opinion's, but do not be critical of the making of the opinion!!!

 

Im changing my moniker.

 

I think the players screwed up but the coaching staff did ok with the zone, then switched up to man-to-man... but then when they went back to the zone in the last parts of the fourth quarter, that's when Steve made that turnover and Kenny spun into double defenders. Plus, we should have given Steve more help on Nash, although Steve does win part of the blame game for not getting up on a hot shooting Nash when the game was on the line. Game over. It was about players reading the defense and adjusting to it. Our team is still learning, however talented or willing, but I think what the quotes (implied) above, it's encouraging to see that the Rockets are working on cutting through zones in practices and that with more games under their belts, we can pull out games.

But my main point was, it was fun watching us lose! Oh, and that negativity really does make everyone feel better after a loss! Oh, and that posters who criticize madly after a loss are pretty cool.

But I guess there has to be a yang to a yin---knee jerk ranters to sunshine blowers.

 

I think the combo of Cato and Griffin was providing excellent help in cutting off the lane and shutting down nowitzki. While I think the players screwed up, I also think they were mismatched. The players misread the defense and Rudy misread the matchup. I am cpmplaining out of frustration because Nelley couldn't match our frontline. But I am encouraged by the team growth, nonetheless.